She ended here, and beckon'd us: the restParted; and, glowing full-faced welcome, sheBegan to address us, and was moving onIn gratulation, till as when a boatTacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voiceFaltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried,'My brother!' ' Well, my sister.' 'O,' she said,'What do you here? and in this dress? and these?Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!''No plot, no plot,' he answer'd. 'Wretched boy,How saw you not the inscription on the gate,LET NO MAN ENTER IN ON PAIN OF DEATH?' 'And if I had,' he answer'd, 'who could thinkThe softer Adams of your Academe,O sister, Sirens tho' they be, were suchAs chanted on the blanching bones of men?''But you will find it otherwise,' she said.'You jest: ill jesting with edge-tools! my vowBinds me to speak, and O that iron will,That axelike edge unturnable, our Head,The Princess.' 'Well then, Psyche, take my life,And nail me like a weasel on a grangeFor warning: bury me beside the gate,And cut this epitaph above my bones:Here lies a brother by a sister slain, All for the common good of womankind.''Let me die too,' said Cyril, 'having seenAnd heard the Lady Psyche.'I struck in: 'Albeit so mask'd, Madam, I love the truth;Receive it; and in me behold the PrinceYour countryman, affianced years agoTo the Lady Ida: here, for here she was,And thus (what other way was left) I came.''O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none;If any, this; but none. Whate'er I wasDisrooted, what I am is grafted here.Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breatheWithin this vestal limit, and how should I,Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderboltHangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.''Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there,I think no more of deadly lurks therein,Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be,If more and acted on, what follows? war;Your own work marr'd: for this your Academe,Whichever side be Victor, in the hallooWill topple to the trumpet down, and passWith all fair theories only made to gildA stormless summer.' 'Let the Princess judgeOf that,' she said: 'farewell, Sir--and to youI shudder at the sequel, but I go.'
Field of Glory II: Wolves at the Gate
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